


The Hero In Your Heart

by AndyAO3



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 3, Fallout 4
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Not Sure If Slow Burn Or Not, Nuka world dlc, Sad Robots
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-24
Updated: 2017-11-23
Packaged: 2019-02-06 03:38:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12808782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AndyAO3/pseuds/AndyAO3
Summary: A pretty face doesn't necessarily imply a pretty personality to go with, but that doesn't make Nick less of a sucker for one. And in this case in particular? Let's just say he can justify it all he wants, but he's still being played like a fiddle.This is one of those things he should probably resent more than he actually does, isn't it?





	The Hero In Your Heart

**Author's Note:**

> This relationship starts out deeply unhealthy and... will probably. kind of. improve. I don't actually know what to call what these characters tend to have. The phrase "catty bickering" comes to mind. Essentially Li isn't the greatest role model, and anyone who tells you Nick doesn't have some pretty mean skeletons in his closet is lying. But that's kind of the point here? You don't have to be an upstanding model citizen or a Good Person to do things that are net positives. Empathy isn't a prerequisite of doing the right thing. Hell, you can be motivated by spite and bitterness and selfishness and STILL do the right thing just because fuck anyone who says you can't. 
> 
> We've got the inspirational characters in the bag; Ted and Harkness have a full story with a well-rounded arc. Now let's have a story about assholes that make questionable life choices. I hope they're as fun to read about as they are to write, because I've seriously loved working on my drafts of this. 
> 
> CONTENT WARNINGS (will edit as story goes): alcohol, smoking, emotional manipulation

The case was a wash.

Nick had to stop himself from reaching for the lighter and cigarette in his pockets for the fourth time in an hour as he followed Ted to the Atom Cats Garage, their last lead. The job was to suss out whether Roger Warwick was a synth, and bring back any proof that he wasn't one to the client so that it could be used to keep the man safe. Problem was, by any measure Nick could think of, all the evidence pointed to a much more grim outcome: Warwick was almost certainly a synth, and not one of the ones the Railroad had rewritten either. An honest-to-God replacement, living with the old Roger's family.

The garage was their last lead. Apparently, the Cats did business with the Warwicks fairly often, keeping all their pumps working so that the farm stayed above sea level and wouldn't stink bad enough for the Gunners out in Quincy to smell it. Ted had suggested that if they had to, they could bribe someone to stick up for the poor bastard; Nick was hoping it wouldn't come to that, but he agreed that the replacement Roger was a good man who was just caught up in the middle of it all. Hell, the synth was a better husband and father than the original had ever been.

It was a lousy, rotten situation with no right answer. If they didn't come up with the proof, Roger Warwick would die to the anti-synth vigilantes, and the family would be left without a rock to tether itself to. Not only that, but if the man _was_ Institute, then there'd probably be some retribution in the form of visits from Coursers for the ones responsible, an idea that Nick liked even less than the thought of just straight-up lying.

Nick put his train of thought on hold when Ted stopped in the middle of the road, peering at the sign outside the garage's perimeter fence. "What's up?"

Ted glanced up from whatever he was staring at and grinned, pointing to the sign. When Nick came around to look at what he was pointing at, he had to smile a little too. Railsign. "Which one is that, d'you think?"

"Looks to me like it's the one for 'safehouse'," Nick mused. "Seems like these kids are running more than just a garage."

"I bet they'll love you. They're mechanics _and_ sympathizers."

Nick snorted. "Don't you get smart with me."

With a laugh, a wink, and dual finger-guns, Ted moonwalked through the front gate, spinning on his heel and heading in facing forwards before Nick could tell him to watch where he was going. "Well, whatever. Let's go see what these kids are up to."

"My money's on 'less mischief than you'," Nick drawled, but he followed Ted inside anyway, because this was their last lead. The last place to turn that wasn't just telling Warwick himself that the jig was up and he needed to get the hell outta dodge if he wanted to save his own skin. But even then, the Institute probably wouldn't approve of losing a resource, and it was likely Roger would still end up dead once he'd outlived his own usefulness.

Damned if they did, damned if they didn't. The last time Nick had been in a situation this rotten, he'd been kept hostage for weeks by a gang and had the shit beat out of him by the boss's girl. But this time, the consequences would be more than just an old synth getting a baseball bat to the dome. Darla had been a rotten little thing, but Skinny was a generally upstanding guy for a mobster, and he'd probably saved Nick's hide with his indecision. The Institute wasn't like that. Sentimentality wasn't in their mission statement. To them, the Commonwealth's people had as much right to live as a frog about to get dissected for a class experiment, complete with sterile latex gloves that would go in the trash afterward.

And in this scenario, the Institute saw Roger as the gloves.

\---

The first Cat they met was a broad-shouldered, dark-haired young woman in a leather jacket who went by Rowdy. Just by the look of her, Nick could see why. But then a man with tanned skin and meticulously styled hair came in, wiping his hands down with a dirty rag, and the whole dynamic of the room changed; for one thing, Ted straightened up and stopped trying to flirt. For another, Nick noticed that the jacket tied around his waist had a different logo from Rowdy's. Instead of a snarling cat, it was a coiled, green snake.

"Who're these squares?" the man asked.

Rowdy rolled her eyes. "Said they're doin' detective work or some shit."

"Uh-huh." He looked over the pair of them, his jaw tensing just a bit; he stopped wiping his hands when he got a good look at Nick. "Ain't never seen a chrome dome play dress-up like that before."

"And I suppose you've never met one that could take that kinda talk as an insult, either," Nick fired back, and the man's eyebrows threatened to shoot up past his hairline. A few feet away, Ted snickered.

The man seemed to consider for a second before shrugging and offering his hand, his left. It was at that point that Nick noticed the pip-boy on his wrist. "Butch DeLoria," he said.

Nick took the offered hand and shook it firmly. "Nick Valentine," he replied. When he let go, he gestured to Ted. "This here's my partner, Ted Davies."

Butch nodded towards Ted. "I've heard'a you. You're that guy from the paper, right?"

"That's me," Ted told him.

"Huh." After a moment's pause, Butch turned briefly to Rowdy. "Hey, think you can fetch Li for me real quick?"

Rowdy scoffed at him. "Fetch him yourself. I ain't your girl."

"Ain't nobody's girl," Butch agreed, smirking. Something about it seemed like a private joke between the two of them, because Rowdy was clearly trying not to smile along with him. "Tell you what, you get Li and a couple chairs, and I'll buff your armor for a week."

"Two weeks."

"Week and a half."

Rowdy sighed. "Fine. But I'll hold you to it, Tunnel Snake."

Butch smiled after her as she left, turning back to the other two. "So," he said. "Don't suppose either of you two has a geiger counter?"

Ted and Nick shared a glance between them. "Sorry," Ted ended up saying, grinning to himself, "mine's in the shop."

From the look on Butch's face, that was the right thing to say. "And you, tin man?"

"Still in the shop too, I'm afraid," Nick said.

"Damn shame," Butch murmured. "Mine too."

For the fifth time, Nick stopped himself halfway to reaching for his cigarettes. Travelling with Ted sure did cut into his vices. "So who's this Li character?"

Butch got this weird little conspiratory smirk on his face, almost catlike. "You'll see."

"That doesn't really tell us anything--" Ted began to say, but he was cut off by the return of miss Rowdy, along with four chairs and a new face following along behind her in the ragged, oversized clothes of a drifter. A pretty face under the numerous pockmarks and scars, if Nick were to be honest, with a dainty nose, full lips, and high cheekbones. Long, straight black hair tied back in a topknot was accompanied by severe brows and dark, narrow eyes, and to top it off, the newcomer was a full head shorter than Nick, even being shorter than Ted by a few inches.

Most startling of all, the voice that came out when the stranger's mouth opened was a rich, smooth baritone. "You called, Butch?"

"He's lucky he's with you," Rowdy informed Butch, unfolding the four chairs with the efficiency of someone who didn't want to be there. "Zeke was looking to knock his lights out. Again."

"I was only trying to keep him on his guard and emphasize the importance of keeping his things locked up safely," the newcomer said.

Butch wasn't impressed. "Y'know people would respect you more around here if you just owned up to stealin' shit to mess with 'em, right?" He offered a wave to Rowdy as she left the room, the poor girl having obviously heard enough.

"And you do realize that admitting to that would sap all the fun out of it?" Ignoring the way Butch rolled his eyes, the stranger turned to Ted and Nick and smiled his sweetest smile. Nick was pretty much immediately put off by the guy's personality. "New around here, I suppose?"

Ted stepped up to the plate and held out a hand. "Yeah. Hi. Ted Davies."

"The one from the paper?" the stranger asked instantly, even if he left Ted hanging with the handshake.

"I, uh." Ted let his hand fall awkwardly back to his side. "Yeah."

"So you know the General."

"Yes! Yes. I do know the General." It was rare to see Ted put on the spot so thoroughly. Even with a good three inches of height disadvantage, the stranger was fully in control of the situation. "Why do you ask?"

"I have something I would like to bring to the General's attention. A proposal, if you will." Li smiled. Nick recognized it as being a cold, mirthless thing. "Have you heard of Nuka World, by any chance?"

"Heard of it?" Ted laughed. "Shit, man, I've been there."

"So you know what it's like."

"Well, I mean... Yeah? Kinda?"

"Then you know that when I say it could benefit from a good spring cleaning, I'm not joking about what the potential benefits of such an operation might be, or what the drawbacks of letting it continue to run as it does might amount to?"

"I--" Ted blinked for a second. Nick could see where this was going. "Sorry, you lost me."

The stranger pursed his lips. "You said you've been there."

"Well, yeah, but that was two hundred years ago?"

All that control slipped away along with the stranger's facade; the latter was quickly put back on, but it was more than a little cracked by that point. "Let me make myself a little clearer, then," he said. "Nuka World is a den of raiders and worse. It feeds some of the most vile operations on the eastern seaboard with warm bodies, which it steals from wherever it can get them. I believe that the Minutemen have the power and the influence to be able to burn it to the ground."

Ted stared like a rabbit caught in the headlights of a speeding moving van. "I... Uh. I mean I'm all for taking out raiders? But I don't think we can really afford to be fighting on that many fronts right now. We're kind of already picking a fight with the Institute and keeping the Brotherhood from stealing our shit as it is."

"You protect the people at a minute's notice, don't you? This involves the people of the Commonwealth as much as anywhere else."

A wince from Ted. "Well... Yeah, but--"

"If you can't do this," the stranger sneered, "then _what good are you people?_ "

There was nothing Ted could say to that. Even if there was, he wouldn't have gotten a chance to; the stranger stormed out, and all three of them let him go. Even Butch didn't move to stop him.

Nick wondered if the man was always that mean about not getting his way. Lousy way to live, if that was the case. Worse still was that it worked; there was no hiding how shaken Ted was. Anybody who knew the kid would say it was a low blow - Ted always took these things pretty hard, especially if the idea that there were situations where he couldn't do jack shit to help was involved - and this guy had just gone ahead and done it without so much as batting an eye.

The conclusion Nick could draw from this was that this new guy was a cruel, callous bastard, and that hitting up Nuka World had nothing to do with caring about people.

Eventually, Butch sighed and shook his head, gesturing to the chairs. "Well. Might as well siddown."

"What's eating him?" Ted asked.

Butch looked weirdly disquieted as he eased himself into one of the chairs. "The Pitt," he said after a moment.

And while Ted just looked confused, Nick understood almost immediately what was being conveyed in that single word. "Pittsburgh," he elaborated. "Three dirty rivers, nuclear armageddon, and a couple centuries of steel mill pollution all converging into one godawful irradiated hellscape."

"Yeah," Butch agreed. "Yeah, that."

"Explains the scars," Nick mused. "People there don't go ghoul, at least not in the usual way. The pollution's too bad for that. They just fall apart, slow and painful until there's nothing left. Looks like he survived the first stages."

Butch nodded. "We know they're taking folks from the Commonwealth to use as slaves to run their little operation. I had to come here 'cause, y'know, our mutual friends need the extra hands. But Li, he came 'cause of that."

Ted swallowed hard, pulling up one of the chairs with a shaky hand and sitting down. Nick got the feeling he didn't trust his legs all that much. "And, uh. How'd you two figure that out?"

"Found a synth in the Pitt not too long ago," Butch said with a shrug. "Dead, out in the open where there's nothin' but troggs and scavvers. There was a component on the body that looked real familiar."

Covering his face with his hands, Ted leaned forward and was able to do little more than tremble and breathe for several seconds. Poor kid hadn't seen any of this shit before. Still too new to the wastes, no more than a few months of post-war living under his belt. Even had a cushy home to go back to, with food and clean water and a lover that treated him well. This wasn't the kinda thing he was prepared to handle at all.

"He's been talkin' about getting a merc for weeks," Butch continued. "Guy like him? Caps ain't an issue. Problem is, he's having a hard time findin' any he trusts, especially on a job like this. Raiders could just offer to pay more than he can. I think he figured if he could get the Minutemen in on it, he wouldn't get stabbed in the back."

"I was serious," Ted mumbled. "We can't spare the people. We _can't_."

"And I get that. So does Li, probably. But uh... He's." Butch fidgeted for a second with his cuticles before running a hand through his hair. "He gets weird about shit."

Nick went over all the details in his head, thinking it through. The Warwick case was the furthest thing from his mind at that point; this Li fella was right, even if his methods were screwy and the quest was personal instead of noble. Nuka World was a known raider nest, had been for at least a year by that point. Nick didn't even doubt the assertion that it could be supplying slaves to places like the Pitt. Clearing it out would help a lot of people. Might even be possible to turn it back into a proper trade outpost, like it used to be. It'd be hard as hell to pull off, but if it could be done, it'd be a helluva thing.

But Ted had to go back to do his own thing with the Minutemen after this. And Nick didn't know of anybody else that could really spare a few weeks for a trip like that, or anyone who could absorb the risk of it going south on them.

Shit. "Ted, think you can handle seeing the Warwick case through?"

Ted blinked, looking up with red-rimmed eyes. "Uh. Yeah? I mean, I guess so."

"Alright." Nick headed through the door Li had left through. "I'm gonna go chat with our new friend for a bit."

\---

Nick found Li outside, leaned against a gutted car like he owned it with an open bottle of Gwinnet in his hand, held loosely by the neck. The pose had all the casual confidence of an old pre-war flick; if there were just a little less scarring on both the man and the car itself, it'd be a helluva sight. Even had the dying light of the evening to frame it, just to add to that feeling of nostalgia.

It was a damn shame the man's personality didn't match up with his good looks. Anyone who fell for that face would be in for a nasty surprise when they inevitably wised up to things.

"Nice night, ain't it?" Nick asked in a conversational tone.

Li didn't startle at the sound, only pursing his lips in a wry smile as he continued to stare at the sky. "It's a damn sight clearer than it is down south, certainly," he replied. "Butch hates it, you know-- being out in the open without a roof over his head, being exposed like this. We're eleven years out of the vault and he'll still hide from an open sky behind a turned collar."

Nick hummed, taking it all in. "So what's a raider nest to a vault dweller?"

A snort was Li's answer. "Don't tell me you haven't figured it out from what Butch told you," he teased, tipping his head back to direct that smile at Nick. He gestured lazily with the bottle. "I see your soft-hearted friend decided to stay inside. Your idea, I presume?"

"There are some things he doesn't need to hear," Nick said. "Give Teddy a cause and he'll either go on the warpath or beat himself all to hell over not being able to. Knowing him, he's having a helluva time convincing himself not to just march the Minutemen out to Pittsburgh right now."

"It would be useless," Li noted. "Short of stealing the Prydwen, there would be no way to move the required amount of troops that far from home, and even then there'd be no way to get them to care about what they were fighting for once they got there. And the Brotherhood's already tried clearing it out once."

"Sounds like you've given it some thought yourself."

Li's smile took a cold turn; he set down the bottle on the roof of the car and stretched, sighing as he settled back into place afterward. "I didn't catch your name before."

"Then I suppose we'll have to remedy that," Nick said, tipping his hat. "Nick Valentine. A real pleasure."

"Well, it's good to meet you, mister Valentine. Most know me as Li Xiao."

"That make Li the surname?"

That earned Nick a much more honest grin. "Aren't you clever? A good guess, but no. My given name is Xiao Li-Tzu."

It probably meant something - most names did, when it came down to it - but that something was a mystery to Nick. "Ain't so much a matter of being clever as it is just being old enough to know these things, really," he said. This time when he reached for his cigarettes, he only paused to shoot Li a glance. "You don't mind if I smoke, do you?"

"Only if you don't share," Li replied, and Nick shrugged and fished out a second cigarette along with the first. He had enough spares to be able to afford sharing them occasionally. Setting the cigarette between his lips, he lit up with practiced ease before handing both the second cigarette and the lighter over to Li, who took them with just as fluid a motion. A natural. Or an addict. Nick decided that it probably didn't matter either way; he was just glad to be able to have a smoke break.

He closed his eyes for a second, letting the smoke waft over the bare sensors and connections inside his battered chassis while the feel of the cigarette between his lips grounded him. The nicotine did nothing for him.; it was the act itself that was comforting. "So," he said after a few moments, "this mission of yours-- it's personal, ain't it?"

Li sighed, letting out a long stream of smoke as he did so. He flipped the lighter shut with a _clink_ and handed it back to free his hand up and reach for his bottle of Gwinnet again. "Going to give me a lecture, mister Valentine?"

"It'd be awful hypocritical of me if I did." No, Nick knew a vendetta when he saw it. Knew because he had experience with them. "I'm just tryin'a figure you out, that's all. A man like you doesn't give a rat's ass about the greater good."

"How cruel of you to say," Li mused, smiling in spite of his words. "You think me so cold as to not care about the people in the Pitt? I'm hurt."

"That's exactly what I think. But whether or not you care about what happens to those people is beside the point. What matters is that you're not wrong." And damn him for looking so smug about it. Nick was starting to realize he'd been played like a fiddle. "I've been around long enough to know full well what kinda havoc a raider nest like the one in Nuka World brings with it. There's no arguing with the fact that it needs to go. And the idea that it's been supplying like the Pitt with slaves ripped straight from the Commonwealth ain't all that much of a stretch."

Yeah. Smug was a good word. But so was 'hopeful'. Li's face had lit up like a sunrise, bright and attentive even as he tried to look stern to hide it. "So you believe me," he said.

God damn, he was beautiful. What the hell was Nick getting himself into? "If you think you can figure out a way to pull this off, then I'll back you up on it." It wasn't much, but it was better than Li getting frustrated and going in alone. "It's worth a shot, even if it goes south."

Li smiled, plucking his cigarette from his lips in favor of taking a long swig from the bottle. Once that was done, he set it down on top of the car again and closed the distance between them to peer at Nick curiously, exhaling smoke through his nose. He seemed to be thinking, although there was no way to tell what it was about. Nick was observant, not a mind-reader.

He wasn't expecting Li to stand up on tiptoe to steal his cigarette and kiss him.

"You're a good man, aren't you?" Li murmured as he drew away, looking for all the world like the cat that got the canary. Nick was speechless, utterly baffled. This man was a menace to society. To Nick's sanity.

And damn if he hadn't gotten his way.

 


End file.
